Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises to not sell their data

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/02/mozilla_introduces_terms_of_use/

by tempodox • 1 year ago

340 233 1 year ago

theregister.com

booberry• 1 year ago

Well, what do we move to now?

chgs• 1 year ago

There are three browsers. Chrome, Firefox and safari

The rest are basically skins. How much does “brave” contribute to chromium? How much does librefox contribute to the core Firefox engine?

kennysoona3• 1 year ago

Some offer functionality not found in the main browser they fork from, like Waterefox having the ability to share normal, private and tor tabs all in one browser window.

homebrewer3• 1 year ago

Vivaldi does quite a bit of upstream development (for their team size), and it is as close to the original Opera as you're going to get. It is proprietary, though (but their history w.r.t to treating their users right is better than everybody else, except maybe Apple).

Dotnaught• 1 year ago

Brave disables or removes a number of Chromium features: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...

deadbabe2• 1 year ago

Brave

dwedge3• 1 year ago

Is that the same Brave that injected their crypto functionality into the HTML of sites downloaded over HTTPS, like Twitter? I don't trust them

gear54rus• 1 year ago

It does not suppport extensions on mobile, bascially useless at being a user agent in the true sense of the word.

magicalhippo• 1 year ago

Being discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43229267

mcherm• 1 year ago

One of the good things about this article is that it linked to a significant number of Firefox forks that are being offered.

mre• 1 year ago

If you're looking for a Firefox fork, a couple of options come to mind:

- Floorp (https://floorp.app) - Zen (https://zen-browser.app) - Mullvad Browser (https://mullvad.net/browser) - LibreWolf (https://librewolf.net) - WaterFox (https://www.waterfox.net)

Besides that, there's also Brave and perhaps Chromium.

Bancakes• 1 year ago

Specifically, ungoogled chromium

gorgoiler2• 1 year ago

Part of the uphill struggle for these forks is convincing people their brand is trustworthy.

I’m not sure exactly how, for example with LibreWolf’s lead contributor @ohfp, they are supposed to do this but having a much more fleshed (!) out set of biographies for the core team would help? Everyone’s real name, day job, background — the full curriculum vitae if you will. That would be a really good way of building trust with me, and I’m certainly someone in the market for switching to one of these forks.

I’m not saying that this kind of auto-doxing is a requirement and if it were I would be the first to decry it as an obnoxious entrance fee for the bazaar of free and open source software. We’re talking about a browser though — something as crucial as a text editor, kernel, file system, or programming runtime — and to that end it would be nice to have as much real-name trust built with users as Vim, Linux, Ext4, or Python. By way of analogy, everyone is entitled to a private life etc., but if you’re running for office then you should consider sharing as much not as little as possible.

Sorry if I sound entitled. I don’t mean to be. I’m just realistic about how terrifying it would be to find a supply chain attack in my browser.

ekianjo2• 1 year ago

Here are alternatives listed here, all FOSS: https://boilingsteam.com/poll-trust-in-firefox-mozilla-is-go...

HackerThemAll• 1 year ago

Nowhere. The whole panic is just attention. Nothing's gonna change wrt to your data at Mozilla, especially that you can disable *everything* straight from settings and/or about:config.

cwillu• 1 year ago

They stopped letting you access about:config on mobile on the normal releases a long time ago.

seqizz2• 1 year ago

Until one of the next minor updates

mglvsky• 1 year ago

I was going to suggest Ladybird, but it isn't released yet :)

lawn• 1 year ago

It looks like I'll be stuck with Firefox until a Servo browser or Ladybird matures...

Which unfortunately isn't anytime soon.

Xelbair2• 1 year ago

Probably Librewolf, or other firefox clone sadly.

I got burned by waterfox in the past, so i'm still reluctant.

tofof• 1 year ago

Can you explain what burned you? I imagine many of us are trying to sift through the raft of alternatives, and waterfox is a frequent mention, so data about pros and cons is valuable.

EasyMark4• 1 year ago

i've been using floorp for about a year with no issues other than the rare "chrome only" pages, for those I just use vivaldi. Floorp with sideberry and ublock is a pretty nice setup.

agilob• 1 year ago

Do not need to move anywhere. This is literally a non-issue started for fun by tiktok idiots who didn't read the ToS. Nothing in Mozillas behaviour is changing, they had to reword the ToS for legal reasons. https://old.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/1j0n4un/firefox_...

BoiledCabbage• 1 year ago

The reddit post you link does not support your argument.

Your should read past the initial post to the comments where what your say is refuted.

yjftsjthsd-h3• 1 year ago

Nothing in Mozillas behaviour is changing, they had to reword the ToS for legal reasons.

The legal reasons appear to be that they are and/or have been and/or will sell user data:

In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar.

- https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms...

nosioptar• 1 year ago

Lynx is the only clear choice. It doesn't sell your data. It doesn't advertise other services like Pocket. It doesn't need an ad blocker. Its immune to JavaScript exploits.

robmsmt• 1 year ago

In another alternative dimension, the Firefox guys 10 years ago would have capitalized on what their users wanted which is mostly around privacy and not being Google. Instead we got pocket, a re-hashed VPN and a bunch of privacy-degrading changes which slowly erode trust.

mananaysiempre4• 1 year ago

For what it’s worth, as a Pocket user from before it got bought by Mozilla, it’s only gotten worse since then. First the mobile apps lost the ability to show full web pages (“Web View”) while offline, which was basically the whole point for me originally. Now the Share Link button has stopped sharing the actual link and instead uses a redirection service (pocket.co) presumably so that Pocket/Mozilla can track you.

AshamedCaptain3• 1 year ago

I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke Mozilla to remove this feature. I agree with you was the entire reason I used Pocket (literally replacing AvantGo for me).

Now Pocket is basically yet another ... web portal? advertisement platform? social network? I do not know how to describe what it is now, other than useless.

glenstein18• 1 year ago

First the mobile apps lost the ability to show full web pages (“Web View”) while offline,

I've used Pocket on and off since back when it was called Read It Later and I don't recall it ever offering this feature (offline access to saved web page versions of articles), at least not outside of the premium service.

So I tried my best Googling skills, which seems to have increasingly diminishing returns with every passing day, but I did find a LinkedIn article from 2017 noting that this archive of web page feature was premium even then.

(Edit: It's worth noting that InstaPaper doesn't offer this either. Nor does Raindrop, nor did Omnivore (RIP) although you could print to PDF and upload it to Omnivore. The only article saver service I'm aware of that does is Wallabag, which is self-hosted.)

10. Premium options
So far, every feature has been free. If you upgrade to a premium plan, you'll get other features, such as permanent copies of your articles in case they're removed from the web, suggested tags to make bookmarking even easier, and the removal of sponsored posts from Your List.
This post was originally published on Proof Is In the Writing on July 20, 2017.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/complete-guide-pocket-ultimat...

mtillman• 1 year ago

They acquired Anonym and hired a series of ad tech execs over the past ten years with a commitment to becoming an ad network.

epiecs• 1 year ago

I can recommend Zotero. You also don’t have to pay for storage if you have a server/device that is webdav capable. I connected it to my Synology nas and the setup was trivial.

atoav• 1 year ago

How would Mozilla have acted differently if it was captured by its commercial competitors?

Ygg2• 1 year ago

A VPN could work iff they made it actually usable. To this day I can't pay because VPN is partially rolled out.

zx8080• 1 year ago

Slowliness of the user base trust erosion means annual bonuses for the C-levels. Every year. That's by design. I'm sure they are pro's in burning frogs (or users) slowly. (Until one morning we realize that FF has become Chrome).

ajdude• 1 year ago

I don't understand how they could be pulling in half a billion a year for a decade and still have financial problems... even if they just put that money in a low risk money market investment account the whole company could have just ran off interest by this point.

nicce2• 1 year ago

CEO salary alone was 6.9 million in 2022. I wonder what else is overpaid…

martin_a• 1 year ago

Well, they took over things like Pocket, build that VPN service and Firefox Send and probably founded other projects that are not important to the core of their "business".

If Mozilla would have solely focused on Firefox and Thunderbird we could be in a better place right now.

nurettin2• 1 year ago

Maybe some of the money props up rust

blinding-streak• 1 year ago

They spent a lot of time and effort building a mobile OS for some reason. I'm sure that didn't help.

glenstein18• 1 year ago

which is mostly around privacy and not being Google.

I don't understand why you're framing this as though those were mutually exclusive. They did the privacy stuff, and they did the side bets at the same time.

The side bets didn't come at the expense of privacy despite repeated breathless attempts to imply otherwise, mostly here in the backwaters of hn comment sections. That whole argument has been vibes all the way down and it's depressing to see so many people repeating it.

michaelcampbell2• 1 year ago

> which is mostly around privacy and not being Google.
I don't understand why you're framing this as though those were mutually exclusive.

They... didn't? If you frame it "mostly around (privacy and not being Google)" and not "(mostly around privacy) and (not being Google)". But even the "and" doesn't seem exclusive to me.

do_not_redeem• 1 year ago

What about their side bet of buying an adtech company?

https://www.adexchanger.com/privacy/mozilla-acquires-anonym-...

underseacables• 1 year ago

As soon as they got Pocket I cancel my subscription. I love it, but I will not support Mozilla.

_the_inflator• 1 year ago

What do you mean by that "mostly around privacy and not being Google"?

Can you elaborate further?

It is a not-feature ("X without Y and Z"), and it is hard to capitalize on. Also, what purpose can be served today with even the die-hard Linux guys I know are willing to succumb to binge-watch on TikTok or any other popular app so that there appears to be some double standard and/or lost battle since you cannot prevent data gathering in the public service or transportation, carriers, hotels that combined more than compensate for any measures taken by a "privacy first" browser, security leaks not to mention.

Just curious about clarification.

TZubiri2• 1 year ago

Part of the problem is that the users don't pay, so foss devs often get creative to find revenue.

Another issue is that when you get donations, they are usually more than needed, so FOSS devs get to work adding new features which make the product worse.

Consider Whatsapp, after 15 years we can count the added features in 1 or 2 hands. They manage to find great restraint, possibly related to a low engineer-personnel ratio.

FOSS engineer orgs have no chance at staying the course. It reminds me of the sex mantra, if they likes it just keep doing it don't do it harder.

Exact same thing happens with Wikipedia. But the community puts a halt to most initiatives and they have to keep doing spinoffs like wikidata and wikiuniversity and such

xandrius• 1 year ago

Both Firefox/Mozilla and Wikipedia are actually exceptions in this world as they do get quite a large substantial amount of donations.

So I don't really see this being true. Also foundations shouldn't seek to grow but to keep doing why they do.

See how Wikipedia/Wikimedia, while both getting more money and providing almost the same service, still haven't updated how people can actually parse their content but, at least, didn't start selling data.

yjftsjthsd-h3• 1 year ago

Part of the problem is that the users don't pay, so foss devs often get creative to find revenue.

The users can't pay; there is no way to give Mozilla money for Firefox.

npteljes• 1 year ago

I doubt that these "users" are actually a viable market for a browser.

josteink2• 1 year ago

Maybe I’m missing something important, but why would a locally installed application running on your own machine, open source or not, require to have «terms of use» in the first place?

Mozilla seems truly lost.

Edit: said more clearly, the outrage against the contents of the “terms of use” is misguided. The outrage should be over there actually being a “terms of use” in the first place.

braiamp11• 1 year ago

Because law sucks. Every open source application has language that says about the same thing.

drpossum2• 1 year ago

That's patently untrue. There are plenty of open source projects that do not have "about the same thing" in their terms of use and in fact, just a simple license with easily understandable and permissive terms.

Check out Creative Commons for example, and compare it to what Mozilla asks, if you're interested in learning more. You'll find they're very different.

lolinder4• 1 year ago

Can you point me to GIMP's Terms of Use? All I can find is the GPL, which doesn't say anything about collecting data. I also checked OBS Studio and LibreOffice for good measure with the same result—I can only find a straightforward copyright license like GPL, MPL, MIT and so on.

I tried some of the largest projects on purpose because surely they'd be the most likely to have language like you claim, but maybe for some reason smaller projects are more likely? Do you have some in mind?

EasyMark4• 1 year ago

what sizeable piece of software from any company doesn't have a terms of use?

josteink2• 1 year ago

Any and every application you download and install locally.

ekianjo2• 1 year ago

You can see here the extent of the loss of trust with a survey (700 answers+): https://boilingsteam.com/poll-trust-in-firefox-mozilla-is-go...

squigz• 1 year ago

You can't see anything here...

A survey like this is always going to skew heavily toward people who are agitated enough to go and answer it - particularly when you preface it with a biased post about the issue you're asking people about...

G_o_D• 1 year ago

Brave as a browser sucks !!! Most sites dont load on it Most sites appear blank brave cannot render unless repeatedly refresh like in 90s Even with 60 tabs opened in android it lags as hell, both opening and switching tabs takes 30s to 1min or more

No reliability over sync, lost my bookmarks many time cannot easily run bookmarklets

and much more

Its now just a hunk of paid crypto AI VPN servicea

malfist• 1 year ago

This post is about Firefox. Not brave.

timbit42• 1 year ago

Maybe your OS is borked. It works fine for me in all the ways you said it doesn't.

jqpabc1234• 1 year ago

Just follow the money.

Mozilla's primary customer is Google.

All the executives and developers at Mozilla are being paid very well by Google. Ignoring this influence is to deny the economic reality that you live in and enables your own existence.

You might as well try to deny their TOS were just changed --- apparently in order to avoid liability for privacy claims that wouldn't withstand legal scrutiny.

gitaarik• 1 year ago

So why is this only happening now

braiamp11• 1 year ago

This is yet again a nothing burger. They had to change that definition because in California "selling" means "[...] releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring [...]" in exchange for “monetary” or *“other valuable consideration.”*. You can see user collected data publicly, and use said data to improve Firefox the browser, that would be argued that is a valuable consideration.

The user collected data are things like about:studies, the new tab page, Firefox Addons, and anything listed here https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report

This is literally language that had to change to describe Mozilla's actions in line with California's law.

Kelvin5062• 1 year ago

If so, their execution of that change is terrible. They could have explicitly clarified things, replacing "sell" with more expansive language that would maintain the explicit commitment to user privacy. But instead they changed their words to sound like Microsoft and Google, two notorious privacy violators, and have since only made it worse by only giving us circular explanations.

rustc5• 1 year ago

Unless they're running ads for other companies without taking any money, they are indeed selling data:

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms...

In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. We set all of this out in our Privacy Notice.

braiamp11• 1 year ago

That language is still there. They only collect data with your permission and that data is the only one that is being talked about in the changes.

mmooss11• 1 year ago

their execution of that change is terrible.

Maybe your response is what's terrible.

rustc5• 1 year ago

You can see user collected data publicly

Where? I thought they were sharing this data with partners, not making it publicly available. See https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms...:

In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. We set all of this out in our Privacy Notice.

braiamp11• 1 year ago

Partners include people like you and me that work with them on specific experiments. Depending on the kind of data, for example Normandy [1] data, Nimbus [2] data are used on those experiments and help to develop and improve the product. Results of those specifically are usually private [3], but other telemetry are public [4] which also collects what could be considered PII.

[1] https://mozilla.github.io/normandy/

[2] https://experimenter.info/faq/general-faq

[3] https://experimenter.info/results-availability

[4] https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware

flutas• 1 year ago

This is literally language that had to change to describe Mozilla's actions in line with California's law.

Am I missing something or does that law not apply to Mozilla giving Mozilla the data like you're implying?

Internal data transfer afaik doesn't matter. Using firefox collected data to improve firefox would amount to nothing, it's only when they give that data itself to a third party (in any ways shape or form as you said) that the law comes into effect.

braiamp11• 1 year ago

The problem is that they also transfer that data and make it public [1] and also share with partners researchers for improving the software. Those two usages are selling according to California law, just because they can be argued as something that improves the product Firefox or Mozilla services.

[1] https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware

lolinder4• 1 year ago

As was extensively discussed yesterday [0], their argument about why they had to change the terms actually makes things worse. They try to pass it off as "California has a bad definition of selling" but the definition of selling that they try to throw under the bus is just... common sense. If they're not compliant with California's definition of selling data, then they're selling data by most people's intuitive definition of selling data.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612

braiamp11• 1 year ago

If I tell you "hey, I need to collect data from your system, and said data will be shared with everyone else publicly in our bug tracker", how would a legal scholar read that wrt California law? BTW, layman arguing about legal definitions are not conclusions in matter of law.

jqpabc1234• 1 year ago

use said data to improve Firefox the browser, that would be argued that is a valuable consideration.

Nice try but no.

A "sale" is a transaction between two legally distinct parties. Mozilla does not "sell" your data to itself and it does not "sell" your data to the public or to other users of Firefox either.

If Mozilla is concerned about the legal definition of "sell", there must be some other party involved. Wonder who that could be?

throw912435187• 1 year ago

Does the Firefox in Debian also spy on you? There is no user agreement to click on at least, so it would be illegal (in the EU it would be illegal even if you click "yes", because terms like that would be thrown out by courts).

booleandilemma• 1 year ago

I switched to LibreWolf yesterday. Seems fine so far.

https://librewolf.net/

I'm still not sure what to do about my phone though.

_vqgb• 1 year ago

I'd recommend brave, pretty decent I would say

EasyMark4• 1 year ago

not if you like features of firefox like sync, containers, sideberry, manifest v2 (ublock origin), etc.

rasmus-kirk• 1 year ago

Mull, it's like librewolf, but for Firefox-android:

https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix

moho2• 1 year ago

Mull has been officially discontinued by DivestOS back in December, along with most of their other projects. A fork by the name IronFox emerged but it's too new to know whether it's a real contender.

yndoendo• 1 year ago

Just tried Zen Browser, it's interface maybe clean but user experience is very not zen. It was frustrating to find out how to remove all the Google and WhatsApp from he default layout. Left / right tab system is find but it needs a fly out/in button like IDEs have to terminal / console to compact the view.

Looks like LibreWolf is the one to transition to.

Kelvin5062• 1 year ago

Mozilla seems to have forgotten that they survived Chrome by being overtly, explicitly privacy-focused. They've since stopped being that. Even if they are still tacitly privacy-focused, that's not good enough anymore.

We assume Mozilla is now just another ad-pandering jackwagon because that is the only safe assumption when presented with the facts: a major change in management, followed by removal of "we won't sell your data" across all of their marketing.

Their userbase is arguably mostly people who put up with browser disparity for the sake of peace of mind about their data. That type of user will abandon Firefox the same way we did Chrome.

braiamp11• 1 year ago

Mozilla being explicitly privacy focused didn't get them any effective brownie points. The only thing that saves them is that they are the only viable competitor so, Google, via Chromium has to support them financially so that they don't fail. This is literally the I support my competitor so the argument that I'm a monopoly looks weaker. (BTW, Google practices around Chrome were anti-competitive)

ForTheKidz3• 1 year ago

This is nonsense: firefox was and remains a better browser than chrome just in terms of usability. If you ever believed that a browser maker cared about "privacy" I have a bridge to sell you.

I mean, just look at their business model. Enshittification or bankruptcy was always the future.

CamouflagedKiwi3• 1 year ago

How so? The two are basically indistinguishable to me in terms of UI, their layouts are almost entirely identical. If anything I think Firefox has become more like Chrome over time.

Don't really disagree otherwise though.

Tepix2• 1 year ago

If that were true, its market share wouldn't have tanked.

bee_rider• 1 year ago

Firefox more-or-less didn’t survive Chrome. Market share is in the single digits.

But, among the tiny contingent that has stuck around, most of us are here for the privacy I think.

swed420• 1 year ago

Mozilla seems to have forgotten that they survived Chrome by being overtly, explicitly privacy-focused.

"Forgotten" is too generous. That's like chalking up a corrupt government to "incompetence."

They sold out. The sooner we recognize them as a permanently corrupt entity, the better we will be.

The Ladybird browser and similar efforts are the only hope at this point.

tremon• 1 year ago

I've been seeking out and trying alternatives for years, but there's one thing that I think is essential to practicing safe Internet: a uMatrix/uBlock-style connection blocker. No alternative browser I've tried comes close to acting as my user agent, it doesn't seem to be a priority for any of them.

jqpabc1234• 1 year ago

Mozilla seems to have forgotten that they survived Chrome by being overtly, explicitly privacy-focused.

Mozilla survived Chrome by being overtly, explicitly and almost totally dependent on Google --- one of (if not "the") world's biggest privacy invaders.

And I seriously doubt they have forgotten where almost all their money comes from.

glenstein18• 1 year ago

Mozilla seems to have forgotten that they survived Chrome by being overtly, explicitly privacy-focused.

I don't think I would agree that they ever actually 'survived' Chrome at all. Mozilla had market share because it was the best thing before Chrome, in largely a pre-mobile era (at least in terms of pools of users that determined who led browser market share.) The focus on privacy was sourced from an ethos that has long existed in the software development community as a kind of baked-in default that I think was broadly shared by a lot of people and depressingly now is regarded as a kind of unique personality twist that the occasional company has.

The onset of Chrome I don't think involved survival, but was instead a steady march toward Chrome gaining dominant market share.

metalman• 1 year ago

Mozilla has been told to shed users. The reasons for that are simple, in order not to face racketiering and monopoly prosecutions, there needs to be a plausible "competitor" for the monopoloists to point to,but since there realy is no difference between an internet browser and a full blown OS, they cant let things get out of hand. So all the things have to keep breaking and changing, unless the user base becomes large, relevant and aware. Whats should have them terrified is that the whole alternative software eco system, could be wiped out, leaving no option but to close there grip all the way.

seqizz2• 1 year ago

Still waiting for a fork from core and/or old devs. Will take few more enshittification attempts I assume.

braiamp11• 1 year ago

They will face the same issues Mozilla is facing if they ever want to collect user data. Also, they will probably be financially supported by Google because Google do not want the argument of monopoly to have hold.

aborsy• 1 year ago

Also, Firefox Send, an actually useful feature, was discontinued.

kristjank3• 1 year ago

I will write this for posterity just that the general sentiment does not go unnoticed. It's hard to keep defending the company I convinced most of my undecided-but-tech-savvy friends to switch to after the Manifest API debacle. Mozilla has, in my eyes, become an advertising-adjacent company. Data collection for advertising is just as indefensible as working on face recognition for kamikaze drones. Mozilla has acquired my patronage through perceived support for these values, and this step back has prompted me to cancel my existing and future subscriptions to Mozilla services I use.

Tepix2• 1 year ago

Mozilla is an epic management failure. I've never heard anything good about their management i think. And I've been using Firefox since its very beginnings.

dimal• 1 year ago

Time for a hard fork. Or is it better to double down on the upcoming alternatives like Servo and Ladybug? None of them seem close to being ready though.

hedora• 1 year ago

I looked into donating to Mozilla, and (as always) the first question I asked was “what will this be spent on?”

It turns out it wouldn’t go to software development, so I did not donate:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2024/a...

Even worse, they’re spending the revenue they do get in wildly irresponsible ways.

The AI initiative makes no sense. Currently, dozens of industry leading groups are doing a great job converting unlimited Chinese govt grants, monopoly rents, and VC money into open infrastructure and open weights

Targeted advertising is fundamentally unethical, regardless of whether it respects privacy. Examples:

- A friend struggled with prescription drug addiction and repeatedly relapsed due to targeted ads.

- Entire industries are built on targeting people with gambling problems.

- Companies like Cambridge Analytica explicitly target mentally ill people to change election outcomes and dismantle democracies.

Anyway, I wish they’d spin off Firefox and related stuff (Rust made sense, I think FirefoxOS did too), and abandon the rest of their “mission”.

jonkoops• 1 year ago

I really wish they would do to Firefox what they did to Thunderbird, which is to spin it off into its own thing so it can stand independently. I want to support Firefox, but I do not feel comfortable donating to the Mozilla foundation.

Firefox should just do a Wikipedia style beg button once a year and be transparent on where the money is being spent.

aeve890• 1 year ago

Companies like Cambridge Analytica explicitly target mentally ill people to change election outcomes and dismantle democracies.

What's not that years ago? Also wdym with targeting mentally ill people to dismantle democracies? Last thing I read about that was a FB api abuse to collect user data but nothing about targeting a specific demographic

jonwest• 1 year ago

I think the sentiment was that the mentally ill would be more susceptible to misinformation.

EasyMark4• 1 year ago

Why do people keep bring this up? It's been known for years and years that you can't donate directly to firefox unless you just donate to one of the forked projects like librewolf or waterfox that might eventually make changes that will go back upstream. I agree that mozilla needs to take a step back, slim down to just the browser and browser related tasks like open standards and then move forward instead of trying to save the world. If one of their offerings like security monitoring or VPN or such actually is a net money maker they should keep those as well, but everything else should go.

yjftsjthsd-h3• 1 year ago

Why do people keep bring this up? It's been known for years and years that you can't donate directly to firefox

Maybe it's been known to you, but there are people in these threads over the last 72 hours who have thought that money they give to Mozilla supports Firefox. So it should keep getting repeated until everyone knows.

gruez4• 1 year ago

The AI initiative makes no sense. Currently, dozens of industry leading groups are doing a great job converting unlimited Chinese govt grants, monopoly rents, and VC money into open infrastructure and open weights

Open weights yes, but what about the applications that people actually use? "AI" goes far beyond a LLM hooked up to a chat UI.

Targeted advertising is fundamentally unethical, regardless of whether it respects privacy. Examples: [...]

I don't see how listing a bunch of worst case examples is is supposed to prove the claim that "Targeted advertising is fundamentally unethical". Contextual advertising is "targeted advertising", but I don't see what's unethical about putting software developer job ads next to stackoverflow, for instance.

Anyway, I wish they’d spin off Firefox and related stuff (Rust made sense, I think FirefoxOS did too), and abandon the rest of their “mission”.

How is firefox going to get revenue?

autoexec• 1 year ago

I don't see how listing a bunch of worst case examples is is supposed to prove the claim that "Targeted advertising is fundamentally unethical".

I'd agree that targeted advertising isn't an inherent evil, but left unrestricted it will inevitably be used in evil ways and bring about surveillance capitalism which is very much evil.

eh_why_not• 1 year ago

I wish they’d spin off Firefox and related stuff..., and abandon the rest of their “mission”.

I wish the community (I don't have the technical skills myself) would fork Firefox back into a privacy-focused browser; strip out all the Mozilla "products" code that's snuck in it, and manage the development in a non-profit organization like how the Linux kernel gets developed.

ycombinatrix2• 1 year ago

LibreWolf?

RainyDayTmrw• 1 year ago

Having observed the trajectory of Mozilla since the Internet Explorer days, I am saddened and reminded of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy[1], which seems especially apt here. While Mozilla has become increasingly irrelevant in the eyes of its users and fans, apparently it is still quite lucrative for those at the center of its bureaucracy[2]. What's extra sad is that Firefox is clearly a valuable public good, which seems fated to go down with the rest of this rotten ship.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_ir... [2]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

ikekkdcjkfke• 1 year ago

How hard is it to fork an open source project?

wtallis7• 1 year ago

Forking the Firefox code base is easy, at first. Forking the Mozilla Foundation to keep browser development going long-term is hard.

kernal2• 1 year ago

Hopefully the people that convinced their friends and family to switch to Firefox are doing the right thing and making amends for their mistake.

wtallis7• 1 year ago

It wasn't a mistake at the time.

kernal2• 1 year ago

And now it's time to correct the mistake they made.

Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises to not sell their data

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